Practicallity

[tenchi_no_kashaku]

The first thing that I would like to discuss is:
Right and wrong.
Basically Favorability.
What one person conciders right is wrong, and vice versa. To any one person right and/or wrong is relative to ones beliefs and personal standards. So, there is no such thing as right or wrong. But putting them together is a balance, more like creating guideliness. So why do we use them in the context as just a casual assumption. It's more of a persuasive word than a declarative, which might as well be the same thing.
Would anyone like to add upon that?  

[AbrAbraxas]

well there are two things i can say, one has to do with Freud's superego, in his theory we gain our conscience, knowledge of right and wrong, from the example, not necessarily the words, of our parents and it operates throughout our lives the same unless we make an effort to change it.
second is that people tend to desire to be right to the point that they blind themselves to the possibility of being wrong. and because what they choose has to be right then others must live by a similar code. now that is an older order and you see a new postmodern order that proclaims that no one is wrong and everyone is right, unless of course you believe other than this and then you are wrong. there you see that even the postmodern is trying to enforce their views of pluralism to the exclusion of other possible world views. there are of course higher levels of perspective those that truly allow for alternate perspectives, however they are rare.  

[tenchi_no_kashaku]

Well, maybe there should be something done to make the rare occassion a little more common. But, what would that contribute to?  

[Mallorys Wedgie Friend]

You ought read Charles Sanders Peirce's philosophical writings on Pragmatism. You'll find, and this may answer some of your questions, another name he gave Pragmatism is practicalism.

I'll attempt to give a quick explanation of Peircean Practicalism, etc.

To Peirce, there is the concept of doubt and belief. Belief, to use another description, is a habit. We have a habitual response to a given situation. I.E. we cannot explain something, but we are Christian, therefore we attribut the inexplicalbe occurence to an action of God. Doubt, on the other hand, is the absence of this habituallity (is that even a word? anyway...). The best example I can give you is from The Scarlet Letter. If you've read it, you know that Hester Prynne must wear the scarlet letter for her sin as punishment, and her daughter Pearl gets into the habit of seeing it everyday. One day Hester removes it, and this angers Pearl, because, she has a doubt of what to do in it's absence.

Okay, so, we have doubt and belief. Now, you're probably tooling around with the fact that this is still a philosophy of Relativism (and in many ways it is), however, now we get into truth and reality.

Truth, to Peirce, most simply, is a belief that is unaissalable by doubt. That is to say, we have empirically tested variables to such a great extent that the outcome of something is essentially known.

Reality is composed of these truths. This is a very abstract concept when you get into it. Though we may never know the entirety of the truths, there are truths we observe and accept, at least that's my take on it.

There's more to this, meaning, and signs, but, that is a bit more obscure, I'd have to go back and reread some of this stuff. I'll try to do that this weekend.

Now, another author you may want to read is William James, the second of the the major American Pragmatists.

James, most basically, asserted, that truth (which would eventually read to rights and wrongs) is what is best for the situation.

He used it to justifty his belief in God, etc.

John Dewey, a man we've all been acquainted with, is the third of the three American Pragmatists. I haven't read nearly as much of his work as I have of Peirce's, and James, and that's considering I haven't read much of James.

Anyway, you may want to check these philosophers out if you're looking for some semblance of an answer to your practicalism question.

The other argument, of course, would be from the idealists. We all know that Socrates would tell you there is right, and there is wrong, and that right and wrong is among the perfect wisdom. The majority of us, so to speak, are still in the cave.  

[Mallorys Wedgie Friend]

oh, and don't forget Kant's a priori and a posteriori (sp?)

those are two very major influences on right and wrong ;D